Background
Mr. Wróblewski was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, on June 15, 1927. He was the son of law professor Bronisław Wróblewski from the Stefan Batory University and the painter Krystyna Wróblewska.
Andrzej Wróblewski with wife.
Mr. Wróblewski was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, on June 15, 1927. He was the son of law professor Bronisław Wróblewski from the Stefan Batory University and the painter Krystyna Wróblewska.
Between 1945 and 1952 Andrzej Wróblewski was a student in the Painting and Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts, or Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, in Kraków. There he studied under Zygmunt Radnicki, Zbigniew Pronaszko, Hanna Rudzka-Cybisowa and Jerzy Fedkowicz. For a part of this period (1945-1948), he simultaneously studied art history at the Jagiellonian University.
Initially, Mr. Wróblewski dabbled in the graphic arts (the artist's mother, Krystyna, was herself a practitioner), creating wood engravings and later sporadically venturing into lithography. Throughout this time, however, painting remained his focus. Wróblewski also donned the hat of art theoretician and critic at times, publishing articles in Głos Plastyków (Artists' Voice), Przegląd Artystyczny (Arts Review), and Życie Literackie (Literary Life).
Contrary to many other artistic positions typical of the 1940s, his intense practise, spanning less than a decade, was characterized by an unfailing belief in the power of art. Andrzej Wróblewski was an astute commentator of contemporary artistic life. His numerous press articles and reviews discussing art with distinctly socialist content testify to his interests and hesitations, as well as his disappointment with, and involvement in the doctrine of Socialist Realism.
Andrzej Wróblewski's first paintings were very much Capist in spirit (e.g. Martwa natura z dzbanem/Still Life with Vase, 1946). Early in his career, towards the end of the 1940s, he began to rebel against the dominant Colorist style propagated in academic circles. At the Exhibition of Modern Art (Kraków, 1948), where Wróblewski effectively debuted as a painter, he exhibited some original spatial forms. He remained faithful to painting, a medium he hoped would allow him to transcend mere visualization. It was these hopes - these ambitions to create socially engaged, communicative art - that were the source of his rebellion against Colorism. Rebellion inspired him to act and in 1948 Andrzej Wróblewski initiated efforts to create the Self-Teaching Club as a unit of the Association of Polish Academic Youth at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. Its first members included Przemyslaw Brykalski, Andrzej Strumiłło, and Andrzej Wajda. This was the first group in the history of Polish art to openly manifest against the aesthetics of Colorism. The primary thesis of Wroblewski's program accented the need for art in which "aesthetic and ideological elements would be indivisibly fused."
Throughout this time (1947-1948) Wróblewski focused on experimentation in his own work (primarily oil paintings and gouaches), searching for unique means of expression, remaining open to the influences of various tendencies (Surrealism, abstract art, geometric art), which also strongly influenced other Kraków artists. His canvases of this period frequently include geometric figures; several works incorporate the motif of the sphere, lit from inside or covered in a colorful mosaic. Another frequent motif is the simplified, somewhat "primitive" figure of a fish, which appears in canvases with a somewhat surrealistic tone, in those that are more lyrical, and in his more dramatic scenes. Through exploration, Andrzej Wroblewski devised his own formal language, the source of which was direct and meticulous observation of reality. The artist seems to subject these observations to artistic interpretation, above all striving for a heightened expressiveness, and achieving this mainly by deforming figures and using synthesized, flat planes of intense color that seem to carry metaphorical meaning.
His series Rozstrzelania/Executions, dating from the end of the 1940s, provides some good examples of this type of composition. These scenes of events during the German occupation of Poland are exceptional for the intensity of feeling they provoke. The artist accomplishes this by depicting brutally deformed human figures torn into pieces; at the same time the canvases are maintained in cold, blue-green, cadaver-like hues. Around this period the artist produced other paintings in which he used the symbolism of blue as denoting non-materiality (Syn i zabita matka/Son and Dead Mother, Matka z zabitym synem/Mother and Dead Son, Zabity maz/Dead Husband).
He was also highly interested in art theoretician and literature critique at times, since 1948 publishing articles in Głos Plastyków ("Artists' Voice"), Przegląd Artystyczny ("Arts Review"), Twórczość ("Creativity"), Gazeta Krakowska (Kraków's Newspaper) and Życie Literackie ("Literary Life").
In the early 1950s in the People's Republic of Poland Wróblewski adopted the state-favoured style of Socrealism. After death of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and resulting destalinization lessened governmental pressures on various spheres of life, art included, from 1955 he reverted to his previous interests creating a series of figurative paintings centering on the subject of the family. Generally positive in mood, they were inspired by the artist's private life. Nevertheless, the artist continued mainly to depict the difficulties and fundamentally tragic nature of human existence.
Fajrant W Nowej Hucie
Execution V
Washing
Execution
Queue
Mothers
Blue Chauffeur
Abstract Composition
Landscape
Red Fish
Head
Bust (Woman-Rose)
Potrait of a Woman
Abstraction
Padre
Encounter
Abstraction
Untitled
Sky Above Mountains
Man
Springtime on Academy of Fine Arts
Green Head
Kitek and people
Tatras
The Shadow of Hiroshima
Torn Man I
Gravestone on a Green
Poznań Execution II
Quotations: "I want to step out of myself, go beyond, achieve the impossible, fulfil an unprecedented task, realise a vision, create an absolutely convincing painting, build it with decisions."
Andrzej Wróblewski was a member of the Association of Polish Academic Youth.
Andrzej Wróblewski was married. He had a son, Andrzej, who was born in 1954.